It took six days for the storm to clear, six days doing nothing but training, reading, and meditating. Seras had never been one for mindless repetition, she had always filled her days with as much activity as possible. From mercenary work, weapon training, or her own gun tinkering. But oddly enough, Seras found that she quite liked the tedium of training more than she thought she would. Mostly because she could track her progress with her HUD

Metal essence ability Structural reinforcement Iron 1: 23%

Uses mana to reinforce any metallic construct from physical blows. Can enhance non-metal magical constructs for a higher mana cost.

Cost: Low

Cooldown: None

One week of training nonstop had pushed her essence nearly a quarter of the way towards the next level. This was the result of her training and spending every spare bit of mana reinforcing the walls of the dome as a way of getting used to her new magic power. Petra even helped Seras test out the limits of her reinforcing her body by hitting her with her sledgehammer.

Without Petra using any strength boosting abilities Seras was able to withstand the blows of a peak iron rank might essence user with only minor damage. It did however eat away at her Mana when she took the blows head on. But according to Dustin it was still a pretty impressive ability for a newly awakened essence. Something that could save her in a critical moment, or boost her allies' defenses was a very handy ability.

If only she could say the same for her tech essence abilities. Her first ability seemed to require a huge base of both technical and magical knowledge to use, which meant Seras had weeks of reading ahead of her before she could even attempt to use it.

As for her other ability, the Spark of Madness, she couldn’t even begin to advance that one until she gathered the materials needed for the summon, as well as learning the base knowledge she needed just to draw the ritual.

She was beginning to wonder if maybe the Technology essence was somehow defective. Did the synthetic nature of it somehow fuck with whatever made the magic work, because according to Flint and Dustin, she shouldn’t have gotten any of her abilities without the requisite knowledge to use them.

Still, it was a good start for only a week’s work.

If her pace stayed the same then she would max it out in a little under a year. Which sounded like a lot when you added in the nine-teen other abilities she would need to work one. But in this case more essences and awakened abilities had a multiplicative effect on growth rate since they gave their user the power to start throwing themselves into adventuring work and fighting monsters. Dustin said most iron rankers with a good foundation spent about a year or two in iron rank before hitting bronze.

Either way Seras was pleased with her first steps towards advancing, and couldn’t wait to awaken all her abilities.

With the storm petering out in the early morning of the sixth day the crew, and their Heidels, were ready to stretch their legs. Buck nearly ran off while Seras was still mounting up, there hadn’t been much room for the Heidels to move around and they were clearly pent up and bored.

The landscape outside had changed during their time in the shelter. The dried riverbed they had been following was filled in with dust and was hard to see the outline of. Any semblance of game trials through the brush was gone, and plenty of the short scrubs had been buried in dust.

“Keep an eye on the sand, plenty of monsters like to lurk in the new sand drifts.” Dustin warned before they once again began to move.

That day they had to continuously rein the Heidels in so they didn’t wear themselves out. Buck seemed to be especially displeased with this, as when Seras dismounted for a break the dammed lizard tried to eat Seras’ hair. Stupid bastard ended up hacking on the nanite dust when her hair dissolved.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Close to the beginning of dusk Dustin held up the caravan while he and Flint went to poke a suspicious sand dune. The dune turned out to a big lizard monster with sand colored skin and strange rhombus shaped plates along its spine. Seras stayed with Petra and reinforced her conjured armor, as well as the wagons.

In the end her efforts were pointless as Dustin and Flint expertly kited the big lizard until its own blood began to cook it from the inside out.

The two did a sweep before declaring the area safe. They made camp early while Dustin and Flint drew a large ritual circle around the fallen monster.

With the camp all set up and an hour or so from sundown Seras leaned back against her pack and kept reading the volumes of basic magical theory. Her HUD allowed her to read during the day which allowed her to get through the first volume and on to the second.

After nearly four hundred pages of talking around the subject Dundee finally got around to describing magic Density and quality. Like the ranks ambient magic came in different levels, it started at low iron, meaning you most saw iron rank monster with a few rare bronze, then mid iron which just meant there’d be slightly more bronze and the very rare silver, and so on.

The density of the ambient magic was the measure of how often manifestations occurred.

Most of the Salt Sands for example had a quality of low to mid bronze, but the density was so low that it was rare to see bronze rank monsters across the vast landscape. And the monsters that spawned in packs had lower numbers. The same went with the region called the Glass sands, low to mid bronze with an abysmal density.

The other desert regions of the continent, the Gold sands, the Blood sands, and the black sands, were in the silver range of magic quality with a slightly higher density.

The Five desert region covered nearly half of the whole continent and spanned a large number of mountain range, lakes, and major rivers. Not to mention the higher-than-average clusters of Astral spaces, both close to the surface and deep below it. The different deserts were named for the type of sand/dust prevalent. The Salt Sands, the desert they were currently traversing, was famous for its massive salt flats that could span far beyond the horizon. The Glass sands supposedly had crystalline white sand with an appearance like glass.

While the Blood, Gold, and Black were also self-explanatory.

Everything changed below the deserts surface. The Labyrinth was a massive ever-changing web of caverns that stretched across half the continent, from the gold sands to the south, and the artic taigas of the far north. The magic quality and density also had a habit of shifting around. One year a tunnel would be magic poor with only iron rank monsters. The next tunnels in the same area could be brimming with magic and silver rank monsters. It was both the life blood of the Five deserts economy, and a source of constant danger.

Of course only a fraction of that was in the volume of basic magic theory, the rest she had learned through the farmers almanac (Which was surprisingly useful) and her talks with Dustin, Petra, Garret, and occasionally Flint when he wasn’t being a bastard. She had tried speaking with the rest of the caravan crew about these things, but their interests were more… ordinary, for lack of a better word.

They liked things like magical mirage chamber battles that were put on in the bigger cities. Some sort of cross between holograms and virtual reality allowed for champions to face off to the death without actually dying. Frank and Chase were big fans of certain teams and would talk her ear off about this player or that champion.

Seras was certainly interested, but the lack of real stakes seemed unappealing to her.

Frank and Chase were both farm boys from some grasslands to the east of the five deserts, so unless her question was plant or animal based they were unlikely to know the answer.

Rohan, a man with tanned walnut colored skin and turquoise beads in his hair, was from one of the local nomadic peoples, the Akemi. He knew a lot about different monsters of the desert, but had never spent the time to learn magic theory.

During their week in the dugout dome he had pulled out a magic crystal that painted the domes ceiling in a dazzling rendition of the night sky. He said he felt uneasy without the stars above him. And when prompted he would tell Seras some of his peoples legends about how the stars got their names. Seras liked his stories, and didn’t have the heart to tell him they weren’t actually the souls of his honored ancestors and just big balls of flaming hydrogen.

Though she now wondered if somehow the magic on this world fucked with the stars in ways her people never considered possible. Did essences and awakening stones manifest on the sun? Did monsters?

“Hey Seras, quit your gaping, chows on you tonight!” Frank called from the fire.

There was a chorus of groans.

On their second day in the dugout Seras had to cook meals for everyone, and seeing as it was her first time cooking ever the results had been less then stellar. Personally Seras didn’t think it was too bad, you just had to peel the burnt layers off to get at the edible parts.

This time instead of burning it to crisp she cooked it too long and the meat came out dry and tough as rubber. She also mistook salt for sugar, and starch for flower. The rest of the caravan grimaced as they took their first bites, and Seras surreptitiously turned off her taste buds and pretended to enjoy it.

Petra finished her food and looked to the group. “Alright, everyone who thinks Seras should be banned from cooking put your hand up.” Everyone’s hand went up.

Seras let out an offended squawk of protest, “Its that bad?”

Dustin put a hand on her shoulder “Child, I wouldn’t feed this to my worst enemy.”

“It has to some sort of crime to be this bad at cooking” Chase chimed.

“Not even fit for dogs” Rohan said while shaking his hand.

Seras harumphed and crossed her arms, but on the inside she was happy. Not to be banned from cooking, which was actually a shame, but at the comradery. The week crammed together in the dugout had proven fruitful in her training, but it also allowed Seras a chance to slowly get to know everyone.

From Rohan’s stories, to Frank and Chases enthusiasm for mirage battles, to learning Garret’s dream of being a famous adventurer. It made her feel just a little less lost.